Deborah Seracini spends two days each week making sure shelves of Coppertone Sunscreen are in order at five Walmart stores in the South Bay and a Rite-Aid in Coronado.

The $12-per-hour job probably isn’t what she envisioned nearly 20 years ago when she earned her master’s degree from the University of San Diego.

Deborah Seracini

Eduardo Contreras

Deborah Seracini

Deborah Seracini (Eduardo Contreras)

“I’m not going to feel degraded or anything like that,” Seracini, 56, said before beginning a recent shift. “I want to do something more meaningful. I want to do something that’s good for the world, for the Earth, it’s just busy work at this point, and I’m glad I have it, or I’d go stir-crazy.”

Her current job’s nothing like the one she had until last July. That’s when she was laid off as a full-time acquisitions editor for a publishing company. She’s since been looking for new full-time work but has only had a few interviews.

Seracini is symbolic of a workforce whose members have taken jobs for which they are well overqualified. That’s why the unemployment rate, near a three-year low at 9.2 in San Diego County, doesn’t tell the whole jobs story. Seracini would be counted as employed, but really, she’s underemployed.

She’s one of nearly 8.2 million Americans who were working part time in June for economic reasons, such as not being able to find full-time work. That’s nearly double the 4.33 million in that situation in October 2007, according to seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The jobs don’t usually pay all the bills, especially when trying to support a family.

“It’s kind of like, are you going to stop swimming and drown? Or are you going to try to swim? Because the alternative is you’re dead, and I’m not going to die,” said Bill Hooper, 42, a father of two who now works as a land-use consultant at a fraction of what he used to earn at San Diego National Bank.

The money Hooper does earn goes toward living expenses, not to larger purchases. That’s one reason underemployment stunts the economic recovery.

“When people lose their sort of high-paying job and they’re forced to take a lower-paying job or a part-time job, they have less money to spend,” said Alan Gin, an economist at the University of San Diego. “So if they have less money to spend, that affects retail sales, that affects economic activity, and we get slower growth in terms of gross domestic product.”

A study released by Gallup in February said California had an underemployment rate between 21 percent and 24 percent, tied with four other states for the highest in the U.S. An additional Gallup study released the same month found that one out of three workers between ages 18 and 29 are underemployed, more than double the rates for all other age groups it measured.

There are many aspects of underemployment. Here are people that exemplify a few:

The self-employed consultant

The last two years have been an adventure for Bill Hooper, his wife, and their two children, ages 11 and 8. They’ve moved from Oceanside to Idaho and are back in Oceanside.

Bill Hooper

Charlie Neuman

Bill Hooper

Bill Hooper (Charlie Neuman)

Hooper, 42, lost his job as San Diego National Bank’s corporate real estate manager in 2010 when U.S. Bank acquired the company and eliminated his position.

He now runs a consulting business, DT Value Partners, and averages about 15 hours a week. He’s making less than 40 percent of his previous six-figure salary.

In 2010, Hooper sold his house in Oceanside, and moved to Boise for a year to consult for a client. But the work ran its course and Hooper did not find a full-time job in Idaho. So he and his family are now back in Oceanside, renting a house.

Hooper said he’s been dipping into his savings account by 25 percent each month to support his family. He doesn’t know how much longer he can do that.

“I’m not sure, until my savings runs out, and then I won’t have my 25 percent, will I?” he said. “It’s scary. I mean I’ve got two little kids at home, they don’t understand that. I don’t talk about this with them, but you know a lot of people right now have zero, and I feel very blessed and fortunate to have what I have ... I’m bound and determined to be back where I was because I have 100 percent faith in myself.”

Hooper said he has recently landed a few real interviews for positions as a senior asset manager and director of real estate, but not the elusive full-time job. Hooper, who has an MBA degree from San Diego State University, has been key on financial decisions for projects such as the offices at Liberty Station, and the shops at San Miguel in Chula Vista. He’s worked for several acquisitions and finance companies.

“I’m 42, I’ve got good degrees, employable degrees,” Hooper said. “Did I ever think I’d find myself in this position? No, but I am. And I can cry about it, and then I still don’t have anything, or I can be like, no I’m going to continue fighting.”

The overqualified college graduate

Matt West, 24, of Pacific Beach, graduated from the University of San Diego in 2011 with a degree in communications and a minor in marketing.

He’s spent more than a year parking cars in the Gaslamp district for Sunset Valet, earning $12 per hour plus tips. He usually works six nights a week.

He’s also been a bar tender, a window washer, and helped his uncle manage Section-8 housing in San Diego.

Through his jobs, West is now able to afford to live with three of his friends, and has health benefits through his parents’ plan. Before that, he said he crammed into houses with other USD students, and even lived in his truck for a month to help save money to pay for school.

West is now a site manager at the downtown valet, as he pays off about $20,000 in student loans. He said he’s applied for full-time jobs, mostly through ads on the USD Career Center site. He said he also networks with clients as they wait curbside for their cars (he’s even made his own business cards that point to his Linkedin profile).

West said he’s open to a variety of fields, but wants a professional job.

“Everyone knows there’s not a lot of jobs out there. I’m happy to have the job that I do,” he said.

West said many of his friends from college moved back home with their parents because they couldn’t find work, a path he won’t follow.

“I have that mentality that I don’t want to do that,” West said.

West, who came to USD from Oregon, played three years of football for the Toreros. He said he has several cousins in the San Diego area who support him in a variety of ways, though financially he is on his own.

The overqualified career professional

Deborah Seracini was laid off from a $50,000-per-year job as an acquisitions editor for Arcadia Publishing last July. It came when the company finalized a move from San Diego to Charleston, S.C. She then found a two-day a week freelance book distribution job with Thunder Bay Press that paid $35 per hour, but that ended in June.

She’s left with the Coppertone part-time job, which she found through a contact at a marketing agency that contracts with the sunscreen maker. She makes sure that the shelves are straightened and that items are facing out. If people have thrown trash behind the display, it’s her job to take it out.

Seracini lives in National City, in the house she grew up in. She has no health insurance.

Up until last year, Seracini had been putting her education to related use. She earned her master’s in public history at USD in 1993, and was a park ranger and archivist in Death Valley and San Diego until 2000. She then got a job as the public service manager at the Coronado Visitors Center, where she worked through 2006 before landing the post at Arcadia, which produces history books.

In 2010, she went back to USD and earned a paralegal certification, but hasn’t used it.

Seracini said she’s applied to about 25 jobs, in a variety of fields, with some interviews.

She keeps plugging away, looking for that full-time job, doing her best to remain positive in the search.

“It’s easy to get discouraged, it’s really easy,” she said. “Go ahead, go home and have a good cry, but get back on the horse and keep going at it.”